1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system, a print server, an information processing device and an image forming device. The present invention more specifically relates to a technique of controlling printing process performed based on a printing rule.
2. Description of the Background Art
For producing a printed output such as a document, a rule which is registered in advance is conventionally applied based on information included in a print job and the printed output is produced in accordance with a result of application of the printing rule. The printing rule defining print settings for each print purpose is registered in advance with a printer. This known technique is introduced for example in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. JP 2006-338237 A. According to this known technique, in response to receiving the print job, the printer specifies the print purpose based on template information included in the received print job. The printer applies the printing rule corresponding to the specified print purpose and configures the print settings such as printing double sided and/or printing multiple pages on a single sheet, thereby producing the printed output. According to the conventional known technique, the printing rule applied at production of the printed output is set for reducing the number of printed sheets, resulting in lower printing costs.
When producing the printed output by forcibly applying the printing rule to the print job, the printed output is sometimes produced in a way a user does not intend. It is assumed, for instance, that the conventional printing rule is applied to the print job as described above to automatically configure settings to print double sided and two pages on a single sheet. In this case, even though the user intends to have multiple pages in the document printed on both sides of each printing sheet to cause the printed outputs arranged according to page number for binding, the document is printed double sided of each printing sheet in order from front page of the document to back. In such a case, the printed output is not produced in a way the user intends. Therefore, the printed output may be wasted, and printing costs cannot be reduced.
In the future, by having a rule to produce the printed output with a black toner even for the job to print a document in color, for instance, as the printing rule, it is considered to control the amount of consumed color toners, thereby reducing the printing costs. In such a case, however, even when a user sets a variety of colors with character strings that he or she wants to highlight at document creation, the printing rule may be applied at printing. The character strings with which the variety of colors are set are printed in black, which is the same as the other character strings. As a result, the printed output which does not make difference between the character strings the user wants to highlight and the others is produced. In such a case, the printed output is not produced in a way the user intends. Therefore, also in this case, the printed output may be wasted, and the printing costs cannot be reduced.